Connecting the Stream with Action: #Sandy Conversation Signposts

This has been a trying week for many residents and businesses along the East Coast.

People living and working in and around New York City have seen the worst in terms of damage and crisis response and the best in the leaders and neighbors who acted selflessly in support of the community.

The return on human investment may not be as obvious or readily measurable beyond crises, however it's there. When we choose to upgrade how we connect by acting upon opportunities to be of service, we upload humanism.

Connecting the stream with action

We saw it this week, how social media kept people connected to the news as it developed, and each other -- a new definition of "friend" emerged, they were those in need. People do see it when there is a need for a free lunch, and generosity in giving is the appropriate social gesture.

Social networks had and continue to play an even greater role in keeping people informed than they did when the earthquakes struck Japan, directing attention with images and videos, and highlighting small and big acts of kindness.

The public nature of streams inspires those who see what is happening to copy it. We are social and we'll do what the other is doing. This is where leading by example matters and our propensity to copy is put to good use.

Media embrace real time

A trend I saw developing and coming into its own at SxSW 2011, where media started embracing real time by embedded recording, doing ambient journalism, and engaging in public experimenting.

Citizens are part of it more than ever -- the future of we media was already here, just unevenly distributed. Since switching to the Disqus commenting masks native comments, and because Bruno Giussani left a comment on that post that is still very much relevant today, I am reporting it in its entirety here:

Good post Valeria, and thanks for the mention -- and for the reminder of
the absurd way established media looked at blogs just 5 years ago.

I agree with pretty much everything you wrote (I actually wrote
something that could fit right into your column back in 1997 already:

"The role of the journalist is changing into a more central figure, a
mediator. He directs traffic, explores, becomes a facilitator of
discussions. His new power will depend on his ability to animate a group
of people, to develop methods and means to enliven the community, to
organize information-gathering and use with the participation of the
members of the community."#

Truth is, we're in an era of hybridization of media, and that goes
two-ways.

Newspapers and magazines and broadcasters have been opening up
to everything form blogging to crowdsourcing.

Conversely, many blogs
have become almost traditional media (in terms of business model and
structure -- take Gawker, or DailyKos, or TalkingPointMemo: they have
more flexibility and smaller overhead, but they're basically traditional
publishers) and it's telling that of the three examples you mention,
David and Steve work for communication firms and John is a consultant
and speaker, i.e. they derive their paycheck from sources other than
journalism. They do "journalism on the side", including their columns
for AdAge etc.

Those are great additions to the conversation, but aren't
necessarily great additions to journalism, in particular to the
journalism that a democracy needs to function -- long reporting,
researching, travelling, taking risks, exposing corruption and lies,
going up against established powers, etc.

Sure, everybody can make a
long list of examples of bloggers doing some of this work (from the Dan
Rather story to the AG scandal to local happenings) and a similarly long
list of established media with lots of resources screwing it up (NYT on
Iraq, just to mention one).

But still the key question remains: how
will the necessary journalism be organized and be paid for in the
future?

The best journalism on TV today is either paid for by the public
through mandatory fees (BBC) or paid for by philanthropic and
corporate-social-responsibility money (Bill Moyers on PBS): is that the
model of the future?

A second caveat is: while all you write applies perfectly to the US
media landscape, it doesn't necessarily apply to the rest of the world,
where media habits, market structures, and roles are different.

In many
African countries, the best journalism today is often done by bloggers
-- because they have a space for freedom that newspapers don't (it's
easier to shut down a printing plant: read the difficulties Andrew
Mwenda encountered trying to print his newspaper.

In Europe, newspapers' and magazines' sites dominate the online space
and conversation (with the possible exception of Italy, where Beppe Grillo has emerged as a major political force, mostly
because television news has turned into irrelevant political banter and
most newspapers are going the same way).